Water levels are steadily rising here after some rain in the week. Fairly heavy rain is falling this morning, and has probably brought smaller stuff up to a medium level (that is speculative). Larger rivers not budged much.

It the Wild west paddle fest so i guess most will be heading north, where the forecaast is for some farily light scattered rain mostly towards the west. The Moriston is releasing on Saturday, the Garry on Sunday. Hopefully there will be enough for other runs to come in. I'm told it was high earlier in the week but  wheresthewater is reading low/med levels across the board today.

Tides are low, but there is good surf forecast for Atlantic coasts.

As you may have noticed im struggling to get the formatting right for the blog. Apologies. I'll try and suss it soon. It looks right on my screen when I do it but messes up with different resolutions. If i fail to suss it i'll start up with blogspot or similar. Cheers, ned.

First up, some local stuff. Aira beck pics on DBP forum. There seems to be a lot of motivation around to go and find whatever is left to do across the region. I'm sure there are more good little challenges still around.

At the opposite end of the whitewater spectrum, there is a new trip report from 'the canadian river' (it's name cannot be written without causing me palpitations). Inspiring,  scary,  big,  cold, and all in a harsh environment. Its been 26 years now since the first descent, and it is often talked about , but rarely paddled.

I stumbled across this article whilst looking up the first descent date. Its by Doug Ammons, entitled 'Why I run class 5'. A great article about why we do it, at whatever level. If you havent heard the name before, rest assured that this guy has serious credentials. Good paddlers that I've respected have been amazed by his boating and there are countless stories told of his exploits. An old ambition of mine was to run the North Fork of the Payette in Idaho. Its not featured much in the latest videos, as the rapids don't have the visual appeal of bigger drops. It is still pretty full on though, and is often empty of boaters, despite there being thousands of people on the nearby 'South Fork' (class 3/4+). 1700 feet of descent in continuous class 4/5 big and heavy whitewater, but shallow enough to require staying upright, its also the proven training ground for earlier missions on the 'big S'. Anyway, Doug Ammons used to do it three times a day, and not satisfied with that achievement, started doing it with hand paddles!

Here is some history of the North Fork. No pictures again but worth a read. Porn with no pictures leaves more to the imagination?